


Daredevil Vs. the End of the Universe

by sara_wolfe



Series: Imagine Matt and Foggy [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: M/M, Minor Danny Rand/Colleen Wing/Misty Knight, Minor Luke Cage/Jessica Jones, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 18:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15978287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_wolfe/pseuds/sara_wolfe
Summary: Matt's choices after the destruction of Midland Circle kept him away from friends and family - and meant he wasn't there when Foggy died in Thanos' attack. Now he's got another chance to make things right.





	Daredevil Vs. the End of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the end of Iron Fist S2, and hypothetical spoilers for the beginning of Daredevil S3 and Avengers 4. Temporary character death for Foggy Nelson. Very temporary. I wouldn't kill him permanently.

The city was too quiet. 

People had been screaming, earlier, but now most of the desperate cries had died down to whimpers. He could hear a woman moaning in the distance, the sound eerie and haunting. It sounded like she was dying, but she wasn’t. The ones who’d died had never even had a chance to cry. 

Matt’s footsteps were muffled as he stumbled down the street, stepping in ashes that had, just a few seconds ago, been people. Mr. Hansen who ran the corner deli, Joan and Kori who owned the little bookstore/cafe with the best coffee on the block - his blood ran cold when he realized just who else might be among the ashes. Karen and Foggy. He had to check on Karen and Foggy. 

The Bulletin offices were closest, and there was no way that Karen wouldn’t be at work right now, not with everything that was going on. He scaled a fire escape and ran the roofs the entire way. 

He could make out their voices when he was still two buildings away: Ellison, and Henricks who Karen worked with a few times, and a couple of others, and - there she was. Karen’s voice cut through all the rest as he came to a stop on top of the Bulletin building. She sounded anxious and tense, but most importantly, she sounded alive. The sound of her voice filled him with such a profound relief that he went weak-kneed and had trouble standing for a moment. 

He wanted so badly to go inside and go to her. To hold her in his arms as tightly as he could. But, he’d stayed in the shadows for this long for a reason, and he couldn’t risk screwing up her life by walking back into it, now. No, it was better for her if he stayed away. Better for everyone. 

He just had to check on Foggy and make sure that he was okay, and then he would keep his promise to leave them in peace. 

Foggy’s apartment when he got to it was empty, the door locked. He couldn’t hear any sound inside, but he didn’t want to break into Foggy’s apartment, yet. Not until he’d checked everywhere else Foggy might be. 

Hogarth and Associates was his next stop, and he could hear the sound of Hogarth on the phone inside, fury and fear in her voice as she yelled at someone on the other end. Other voices, too, but none of them Foggy’s. 

Matt was starting to get anxious as he darted around the rest of the city, listening desperately for the reassuring sound of Foggy’s heartbeat. Nothing at the hospital, nothing at Jessica’s place - although he was able to breathe a little easier when he heard her voice - and he was rapidly running out of places to look. 

That meant going back to Foggy’s apartment, and possibly running into him, and then having to explain where he’d been all these months - but if Matt was being honest with himself, he’d take a hundred years of Foggy being pissed that Matt lied to him again, if it only meant that he was safe. 

Back at Foggy’s apartment, he bypassed the normal entrances and went straight for the fire escape. Foggy had left his window unlocked, and Matt had the wild thought that Foggy had left it open for him, that he was expecting Matt to come by. But that was ridiculous, because he thought Matt was dead. Because Matt had let him believe, for months, that he was dead. 

But not anymore. Because Matt was going to go through that window, and Foggy would be so pissed at him, but it was going to be fine, because that would mean that Foggy was safe. He had to be. Matt wouldn’t accept anything else. 

He couldn’t hear Foggy in the apartment when he stepped through the window. Everything was quiet, save for the persistent hum of the fridge. But that didn’t mean that something had happened to Foggy. That just meant that he wasn’t here, maybe he was out somewhere in the city, somewhere Matt hadn’t checked during his desperate flight across the rooftops, maybe-

Sand crunched under his feet as he stepped into the kitchen. Even as he knelt down, Matt had the wild thought that maybe Foggy had been out to Coney Island, that he’d tracked sand all the way back to his apartment, that there was an innocent explanation for everything. But then he touched the gritty ashes spread over the floor and under his knees and there was no more lying to himself. 

He’d lost Foggy forever.

* * *

_Five Years Later_

He heard the sounds of a mugging from a block away. He was there in less than a minute, his baton flying out of his hands to wrap around the mugger’s knees, bringing him to the ground with a muffled scream that indicated he’d likely broken something when he fell. 

“You’ll want to call the cops,” he told the mugger’s target, realizing just a second too late exactly who he’d just rescued. 

“Thank you, Daredevil,” Karen said, and her voice calm and steady, a peace belied only by the hummingbird-fast beating of her heart. “I’ll be sure to call them right away.”

“If you’re not hurt, I need to be going,” Matt said, because he couldn’t stand there for another second. 

“Matt, wait,” Karen said, quickly, as he moved backward toward the nearest fire escape. “Please, just - please just talk to me.”

Matt shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Matt, please,” Karen tried again, her voice thick with tears. “It’s been almost a year since you’ve talked to me. Jessica says she hasn’t seen you in six months. Danny and Colleen, either. Are you going to spend the rest of your life avoiding the people who love you?”

“I can’t-” Matt repeated, helplessly. 

“I miss him, too,” Karen pushed on, and that was the breaking point. 

Matt turned and scaled his way up the fire escape, ignoring the sound of Karen’s voice behind him. The sound of his name on her lips faded the further away he got, but he couldn’t forget the sound of the heartbreak in her voice. 

_“I miss him, too.”_

Matt didn’t miss Foggy. Matt was lost without him. There was a ragged, gaping wound in his chest that only got bigger every day he was gone. His heart was beating and he was still breathing, but it felt like he’d died five years ago, like he was only walking around until that inevitable moment that he, too, turned to ashes. Because he couldn’t stand the thought that he was doomed to keep living in a world without Foggy in it.

* * *

Somehow, he made it safely back to Foggy’s apartment without falling off any rooftops. He couldn’t remember any of the trip, which was vaguely worrisome, but he didn’t have the energy to dwell on it for long. He barely had the energy to drag his suit off, dumping it in the corner to deal with in the morning. Then, he climbed into bed and pulled the covers over his head, shutting out the rest of the city as much as he could. One of Foggy’s old Columbia sweatshirts was lying on the bed where he’d left it that morning, and he pulled it close and wrapped his arms around it, burying his face in the soft fabric and pretending that he could still smell Foggy in its threads. 

He must have fallen asleep like that, because when he opened his eyes some time later, there was someone else in the room with him. The other person was not moving from where they were perched on the bedside chair, and there was only one other person in the city who could sit as completely still as he did. Not to mention being so silent that he didn’t wake up when they entered the room.

“How long have you been there?” he asked Danny, as he pushed the covers away and sat up in bed. “And what time is it, anyway?”

“Just after noon,” Danny told him, tossing something to Matt that turned out to be a pair of pants. “Karen called me yesterday, said you stopped her from getting mugged, and then you took off immediately after. I took a chance, figured you’d be here.”

Matt knew Danny had been keeping up the rent on Foggy’s apartment for the last five years, but he’d never come to see Matt here, had always respected his need for solitude. Matt was grateful, even if he’d never been able to thank Danny for the gesture. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, pulling on the pants, and then the shirt Danny handed him. 

Okay, so he really sucked at the gratitude thing, and maybe he needed to work on it. But Danny didn’t seem offended by Matt’s abrupt question, just handed him a pair of shoes and waited for him to finish getting dressed. 

“We’ve been invited to the Avengers compound for a meeting,” Danny told him. “Tony wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone, just that it was big.”

“And we’re going in civvies?” Matt asked, skeptically. 

“Well, I can’t exactly be seen chauffeuring Daredevil around in a Rand town car, now can I?” Danny retorted. “Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to change before we get out to the compound.”

Danny herded Matt toward the front door, detouring quickly into the kitchen to grab something off the counter. 

“Breakfast,” he said, pressing an apple into Matt’s hand. “I swiped a banana for myself. Hope you don’t mind.”

“I’m not sure how good the fruit really is,” Matt admitted, giving the apple a dubious sniff before tossing it into some nearby bushes for the birds. He heard Danny give the banana the same sniff test before clearly declaring it good and taking a bite. “I don’t really remember the last time I went shopping,” Matt continued.

“And Jessica calls me a human disaster,” Danny said. “All right, fine, we’ll hit a drive through before we head out to see the Avengers.”

He pulled one of the car doors open for Matt, sliding into the seat after he got in. Matt counted more two heartbeats in the front seats of the car. 

“You actually got him to come outside and play.” Matt would have been offended at the surprise in Jessica’s voice, if she hadn’t had a point about him. “I underestimated you, Danny-boy.”

“I keep telling you, I am a man of many talents,” Danny said, proudly. “Besides, I promised him Starbucks before we got out of town.”

“Dunkin’s is better,” Luke said, as the car pulled away from the curb. 

“Coffee’s coffee,” Jessica replied. “I mean, unless you’re Danny with that sugary crap he drinks.”

“Summoning my chi burns a lot of calories!” Danny protested, the beginnings of an old, familiar argument that almost made Matt smile. 

Instead, he leaned back against the soft leather seats and listened to the friendly bickering going on around him, letting their voices wash over him.

* * *

Some time later, Danny’s hand on his shoulder shook him out of the light doze he’d fallen into. “We’re here,” Danny said, gently. “I’ve got your spare suit in a duffel bag in front of you; we’re gonna leave you alone to get changed, and then we’ll all go up to the compound.”

“Thanks,” Matt replied. He hesitated a minute, and then, “For everything, Danny. Thanks.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Danny told him.

Alone in the car, Matt quickly changed into his suit and pulled his mask securely down over his eyes. The rest of his team was waiting for him outside, and they made their way up to the front door. Stark, himself, answered the door when they knocked; Matt could hear a faint humming that could only have come from his arc reactor. 

“Defenders, thank you for coming,” Stark said, standing aside to let them precede him into the compound. 

“You said you had something big for us, Tony?” Danny asked, as they followed Stark down a hallway to a room warm with sunlight. There were about a dozen more people in the room, but Matt couldn’t identify anyone else. 

“For you, for New York, hell, for the entire universe,” Stark replied. He waited for them to take their seats and then he added, “We think we may have found a way to reverse all of Thanos’ destruction.”

Absolute silence greeted his pronouncement, and then someone uttered a baffled “What the fuck?” Matt didn’t know who’d spoken, but he agreed with the sentiment.

“It’s something Hank and Janet were working on before they died,” a new voice spoke up.

“Ant-Man,” Danny whispered, leaning closer to Matt. “AKA Scott Lang.”

“When Janet was trapped in the quantum realm,” Lang went on, “she encountered these time vortexes. And they were-” He trailed off, at a loss for words, and Stark picked up where he’d left off. 

“We’ve been working on something that can tap into the vortexes,” he said, gesturing to the people sitting around him, presumably the team he’d been working with. “We’ve run tests that successfully tap into the energy of the time vortex in order to move things back and forward through time. We started with inanimate objects and worked our way up to live human trials, and we think we’re ready to put the final plan into action.”

“And what plan is that?” Luke asked. 

“We’re going to travel back in time and collect the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get his hands on them,” a third voice spoke up. “If we can get the Stones, we can stop Thanos from destroying half the universe.”

“War Machine,” Danny whispered. “Colonel James Rhodes.”

“That’s why we called you here,” Rhodes went on. “We’re assembling specific teams to go after the Stones, and we wanted to offer you the chance to help.”

Matt could sense tension from both Jessica and Luke, the way their heartbeats picked up in unison. “We have a daughter,” Luke said, after a few seconds. “No offense, but our regular hero stuff is dangerous enough, and-”

“We can’t risk making Danni an orphan like this,” Jessica finished for him. 

“Completely understandable,” Stark told her. “I’ve got a five-year-old, myself.” 

“Well, I’m in,” Danny said. “I have a duty as the Iron Fist to help wherever I can.”

“I’m in, too,” Matt said, before he had a chance to think about the words. He could sense the rest of the room looking at him, like they were waiting for a further explanation, but Matt didn’t have one. Not one that he could tell them, anyway. 

“All right, then,” Stark said, briskly clapping his hands. “We’re planning on leaving in an hour, if that works for you two?” he added, to Danny and Matt. 

“The sooner we get this bastard, the better,” Danny said, unconsciously echoing Matt’s thoughts. 

“Great,” Rhodes said. “Settle whatever you need to, then, and we’re going to regroup and start getting ready in about thirty minutes.”

As if that had been a signal, everyone else in the room started to disperse in a wave of noise and movement. Matt stayed where he was sitting, letting everything wash over him as he focused on what he’d just signed himself up for. 

_‘I’m going to make this right, Foggy,’_ he thought, determinedly. _‘I promise, I will do whatever it takes to fix this.’_


End file.
